


Solving Crimes (is the Most Fun a Girl can Have With Her Clothes On)

by Lono



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-08
Updated: 2014-10-08
Packaged: 2018-02-20 08:37:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2422226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lono/pseuds/Lono
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Including:<br/>- A fake engagement<br/>- Sherlock Holmes' poorly-hidden enthusiasm for touching Molly Hooper.<br/>- A madcap chase through St. Paul's Cathedral<br/>- A mysterious inscription, the meaning of which is apparent to everyone but Molly. </p><p>(Originally posted on Tumblr)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Solving Crimes (is the Most Fun a Girl can Have With Her Clothes On)

* * *

She didn’t realize he’d been walking behind her until his arm slid over her shoulders and he tugged her into his side. Even then, it wasn’t until his aftershave reached her nose that she realized she wouldn’t have to wallop a pervy stranger with her bag. Her nose bumped his jaw as he ducked his head towards her.

“Hello, my sweetheart,” Sherlock Holmes purred, a warm grin making him look rather boyish.

Molly Hooper’s gaze slid down to her bag once more. Perhaps she  _would_  have to use it as a weapon after all; there was something very wrong going on.  Feigning a casualness that she didn’t actually feel, she plastered a bland, friendly smile on her face and turned back to him, alarmed to find that his head was still lowered to hers, as if he meant for them to have an intimate conversation as they walked down the highstreet pavement. 

Steeling her nerves, she greeted him. “Hello Sherlock! How are you today? Do you need help home?”

His grin slipped, confusion taking its place. “Why are you talking like that?”

“Like what?” she enunciated carefully.

“Like one of those idiots who thinks shouting and speaking slowly will get the translation through to people who don’t speak English.”

“I am not shout—“ she started to say, her voice loud and her words slow. She stopped, realizing that Sherlock was right. Clearing her throat, she returned her voice and delivery to its normal pacing. “I thought you might be drunk or something.”

Nonplussed, Sherlock stared at her even as he continued to hustle her through the early morning rush, his arm warm around her and his thumb stroking her shoulder hypnotically. “And shouting would do what, exactly? Sober me up?”

“I didn’t think it through. But, well, um… this is strange.”

And then Sherlock was back to his earlier fervor. Tugging Molly close to him once more, he laid a smacking kiss on her temple and murmured, “Just practicing for later, darling.”

“What’s later? How is scaring me and dragging me around the streets of London ‘practice’? And why did you call me darling?”

Sherlock rolled his eyes, lifting his free hand and waiting patiently as a cavalcade of taxis instantly fought to reach them first.

“Sorcery,” Molly muttered.

“Hmm?” Sherlock asked distractedly as he took his pick of the taxis, opening the door for Molly and hurrying her into it.

“Nothing,” she said, still reeling from the whiplash of the last five minutes. “Wait, where are we going?” she asked, suddenly realizing that they were, in fact, driving away from the tube stop that had been her destination before he’d waylayed her.

“Would be helpful,” chimed in the cabbie.

“St. Paul’s Cathedral, if you please,” Sherlock said, making a show of cuddling up to Molly once more. He lowered his nose to her shoulder and—

“Did you just  _sniff_  me?” she asked, once again worrying for his health.

“New perfume? It’s nice. Very becoming.”

“You’re still scaring me,” she said flatly.

He muttered agitatedly, likely annoyed that Molly wasn’t telepathic. “It’s for a case. I’ve been asked to investigate a sensitive matter for the College of Minor Canons at the church.”

Molly couldn’t help but notice that, even as he explained his strange subterfuge, well within earshot of the taxi driver, that his arm was still around her, his fingers idly toying with her hair. She decided, for the sake of her own sanity, that he was simply more tactile when experiencing the thrill of the chase and nothing more.

“And I’m here because?” she asked, hoping she didn’t sound too flustered by all of the Sherlock-Touching that she was experiencing.

“We’re an affianced couple, hoping to marry in the crypt’s chapel, if not the cathedral. Your name is Pippa Fledgely, mine is Mark Ralston. We met at a golf benefit at St. Andrew’s while your family was visiting Balmoral. Your grandmother was a Lady in Waiting for the Queen until her death. You have a First in English Literature from Univeristy of Edinburgh. My family is of slightly more mundane stock, but I am Eton-educated, with a First in Classics from University of St. Andrews.  I was visiting my old college when we met.”

His thumb traced her pulse in her neck before his hand came to rest on her shoulder, only for his thumb to begin stroking right at the neckline of her blouse, moving between fabric and skin.

Molly shivered, but her voice was steady as she asked, “Who or what are you investigating?”

“ _We’re_  investigating a missing bride,” Sherlock explained. “Hatty Doran’s marriage ceremony took place in the Cathedral last week. She married Lord St. Simon, which is just a posh name for Eugene Fitzwilliam, a severely bucktoothed man with a mop of ginger hair and severe halitosis thanks to his propensity for junk food, but I digress. They exchanged vows, he kissed the bride—poor thing—and everyone went to make merry at a nearby reception hall. Hatty told Eugene that she was feeling out sorts, excused herself, and never returned.”

“Oh dear,” Molly sighed. “Lord St. Simon must be terribly worried.”

Sherlock snorted. “Oh, Molly, you unabashed optimist. It’s quite cute, really.”

She didn’t feel like he was paying her a compliment, so she just gave him a fisheyed stare.

“Sorry,” he said, looking slightly less amused. “Lord St. Simon may be a peer, but a wealthy one he isn’t. That’s why he was marrying Hatty in the first place. She was an heir to some digital-toy-pet fortune, whatever that means.”

Molly opened her mouth to explain the intricacies of Nano Kitties, when Sherlock, seeing this, quickly hastened on. “Anyway, the Church says this is the second parishioner that they’ve had disappear in two months, and they want to nip anything untoward in the bud.”

“And I take it they suspect someone?”

He nodded. “A curate whom they brought on only a few months ago. Apparently, what they mistook for piety was actually fanaticism, and they’ve had several problems with him, since. He was the one to officiate the Doran-Fitzwilliam nuptials.”

“Do you think he’s the one?”

“Well, Hatty dropped her bouquet at the beginning of the ceremony, and Peters—the curate—returned it to her. I watched the recording of the wedding on YouTube, and Hatty certainly looked distraught. Something happened between her walking up the aisle and when the ceremony began in earnest.”

“This Peters is going to be meeting with us, then?”

Making a humming noise of confirmation, Sherlock suddenly began wriggling around, digging for something in his pocket, jostling Molly quite a lot but not relinguishing his hold on her. He eventually had to pull whatever he was seeking out of his left trouser pocket with his right hand, and she only felt more baffled by his behavior.

“Here,” he said, “we’re almost there.”

Finally, he withdrew his arm, leaving her feeling a bit cold. But his retreat was only so he could grasp her left hand and shove a ring onto her finger.  Not quite the way she’d daydreamed during really long shifts at work.

She’d gotten used to wearing a ring during her ill-fated engagement to Tom, but that ring was certainly nothing like this one. Which wasn’t to say Sherlock’s ring was gaudy or its diamond ostentatious. It was… well, it was perfect.  Which was saying something, as she’d never really been one for diamonds or much jewelry at all. But this one was clearly an antique, and clearly valuable.

“Is this the ring you bought ‘for’ Janine?” Molly asked, stunned. “Rather a lot of money to spend on a sham proposal.”

“No, I returned that one,” he replied absently, gazing out of the window.

Before Molly could ask anything further, they’d pulled up in front of St. Paul’s, and Sherlock was lacing his fingers with hers, tugging her out of the taxi. He tossed a fifty pound note to the driver, saluted him, and then his arm was once again around her shoulders and he was busy whispering last minute instructions as they hurried up the church’s stairs and through one of its doors.

He did a masterful job of playing a man in love, eager to wed his ‘sweetheart’, and Molly thought she wasn’t half bad, herself. She was even so bold as to stretch up onto tiptoe to press a kiss to the corner of Sherlock’s mouth while they waited in a small queue to reach the information desk. He rewarded her with a delighted smile. By the time they got to the front and the desk’s attendant was picking up the phone to call up to the administrative offices, the woman was cooing over the couple and their impending marriage.

The curate in question met them in a small waiting room off of the main cathedral. Henry Peters spoke softly and soberly about their commitment and what it meant for the church to allow them to wed under its hallowed roof.

Sherlock nodded and asked leading questions, and nodding encouragingly as Molly asked a few of her own. It was only as they were about to leave that Sherlock played his hand.  “And the tithes you’ve been accepting privately, do we pay those up front or at the ceremony?”

Peters blinked at them, and then coughed, giggling nervously. “I wouldn’t know what you me—“

“So the people whose fortunes you swindled: they  _didn’t_  disappear once their usefulness to your ‘ _mission’_  ran out? Where are they, then? Are they hiding here?” Sherlock grinned, looking theatrically around. “Come on out, victims of Henry Peters, no need to be shy.”

Peters’ chair legs scraped loudly on the stone floor, and he bolted from the room.

Sighing gustily, Sherlock stood up. “Come along,  _Sweetheart._  I suppose we should give chase.”  And then he was off.

Molly tried to keep up, but her shorter legs didn’t help her cause. She came to a stop, calculating and slightly baffled as she watched Peters run around the huge sanctuary, not thinking to bolt out any number of the doors he passed. Sherlock seemed to notice this, too, if the way he rolled his eyes even as he sprinted after Peters was any indication.

Seeing him nearing her spot under the Cathedral dome, Molly could tell that he wasn’t really  _seeing_  her. Shrugging, she stooped into a row of chairs and then watched the approaching con man/murderer through the space at the bottom of the seat. She waited until he was nearly upon her, and then she stuck her leg out into the aisle. It hurt a bit when he plowed into her shin, and she imagined she’d have an impressive bruise as a result, but Molly found it didn’t matter much as she watched Peters go splaying satisfyingly, skidding a few feet on the black and white tiles.

As he flew by, jumping on Peters to keep him pinned to the floor, Sherlock crowed, “Brilliant work, Molly,” before he became distracted, struggling to keep the curate in place.

“Where are your handcuffs?” she shouted over their struggles.

“Back, right pocket of my trousers,” he grunted.

“They  _would_ be,” Molly sighed, eyeing his shapely derriere. She felt rather pleased at how efficiently she retrieved the (warm— _grow up, Molly_ ) metal cuffs and helped Sherlock snap them around Peters’ wrists.

While Shelock continued to sit on Peters, the sound of wailing police cars began echoing through the cathedral as they drew nearer.

A dizzying hour later, Sherlock and Molly were given the go-ahead to leave. They stumbled back out into the fresh air, blinking at the bright light of late morning.

“Thank you for your assistance on the matter, Molly,” Sherlock said formally. “You helped me tremendously.”

Waving away his thanks, she said, “Anytime.”

He studied her for a long moment, until she started to wonder if she had something on her face.

“Really? Anytime?” he asked.

How he could still be surprised by this was beyond her. “Yes, Sherlock. Anytime.”

His lips curved in a rather sinister smile, and she suddenly began to worry about ever sleeping a full night again.

“Brilliant,” he said. “Though I imagine John will still be my helpmate whenever possible. But it’s nice to know I’ll have backup when he is unavailable.”

She nodded mutely, her alarm increasing as she thought about autopsies left unfinished and lab reports nicked in ‘the name of the law.’ And she thought with alarm about how fun it would all be.

“Well,” Sherlock said, “I’ll leave you to your errands. Those groceries won’t buy themselves. Perhaps you should get an extra carton of orange juice while you think about it. I can fetch it from you next time I visit my bolthole.”

“You mean my flat?” she asked archly.

He nodded, “Yes, my bolthole.”

Sighing, she smiled at him. He moved closer to, took hold of her shoulders, and gave her a very-nearly lingering kiss to the corner of her mouth, echoing her earlier show of affection. And then he was striding off.

It was only when he’d reached the bottom of the stairs that Molly remembered. “Sherlock, don’t forget your ring.” She pulled it off of her finger with no small amount of regret and held it out.

He turned, his coat swirling impressively. He looked up at her for moment before saying, “You should keep it. You’ll need it later.”

And then he was walking away again, pulling out his mobile and typing furiously.

“I’ll need it later for what, Sherlock? Another case? Sherlock!”

But he was either too far away to hear or purposefully ignoring her. She suspected the latter. Looking back at the ring, she frowned when she looked at the inside of the band.  The was an inscription. Though small, it was still legible. Surprisingly so for an antique. In fact, the etching looked rather new. She stared for a few minutes and then shrugged and put it back on her finger. Unlike the freewheeling Sherlock, she would hate to carry such a lovely thing in her pocket.

But as she hopped on the District line train at Manor House, she couldn’t help but think again about the inscription. Who were  _H + H_?

Fortunately, Molly Hooper loved nothing more than a good mystery. 

* * *

 


End file.
